I've hung my overcoat at the crossroads of media technology and social change for the last 20 years as a journalist, author, and consultant. That includes a book - CauseWired: Plugging In, Getting Involved, Changing the World (Wiley) which chronicles the rise of online social activism - and bylines at The New York Times, The Daily Beast, Huffington Post, techPresident.com, Social Edge, Industry Standard, Inside, Worth and Contribute magazines, among many other publications. I co-founded three companies, including the pioneering '90s protoblog @NY and CauseWired, my consulting firm currently advising clients on the social commons. In my spare time, I'm an adjunct instructor of social media and philanthropy at New York University.

The #StopKony Backlash: Complexity and the Challenges of Slacktivism

If you have a Twitter or Facebook account, you’ve almost certainly learned by now about Joseph Kony, leader of the brutal Lord’s Resistance Army in Uganda, and a wanted war criminal responsible for the deaths of thousands and the abduction of as many as 30,000 children in the service of conflict and terror. The super-viral 30-minute film KONY 2012 is part of a campaign by the organization Invisible Children that “aims to make Joseph Kony famous, not to celebrate him, but to raise support for his arrest and set a precedent for international justice.”

Well, mission accomplished. The video has been viewed more than 38 million times on YouTube, 13 million times on Vimeo, and has been the single most shared piece of media on Twitter, Facebook, and Reddit over the past couple of days. If the wired world didn’t know Joseph Kony last weekend, it does now.

And that was the main point of the film, which tells the personal story of Jason Russell and his organization (and indeed, his feelings as a father) and their reaction to the violence in Uganda – the video asked people to share it, as well to sign a petition, order a participation “kit,” and donate funds to Invisible Children.

It was a simple ask, and easy to say yes to. Millions did. Kony 2012 flooded the social networks. The #stopkony hashtag is still trending on Twitter after three days. A tweet vowing a $1 donation for every retweet has been retweeted nearly 200,000 times. I can tell you that in my own social networks, people shared Kony 2012 with high spirits and high hopes. One typical comment: “We are stopping genocide. We are stopping murder. We are ending child soldiers. Stop Kony now!”

Cue the backlash.

Writing on Foreign Policy‘s blog, freelance reporter Michael Wilkerson, who’d spent time on the ground in Uganda, wrote that the Joseph Kony story was terrible indeed – but far from as simple as the video made out:

It would be great to get rid of Kony. He and his forces have left a path of abductions and mass murder in their wake for over 20 years. But let’s get two things straight: 1) Joseph Kony is not in Uganda and hasn’t been for 6 years; 2) the LRA now numbers at most in the hundreds, and while it is still causing immense suffering, it is unclear how millions of well-meaning but misinformed people are going to help deal with the more complicated reality.

Others criticized a photo used in the video showing “Nelson and his fellow co-founders are holding weapons and posing with members of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army.” Wrote blogger Grant Oyston, a sociology and political science student in Canada:

Here’s a photo of the founders of Invisible Children posing with weapons and personnel of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army. Both the Ugandan army and Sudan People’s Liberation Army are riddled with accusations of rape and looting, but Invisible Children defends them,arguing that the Ugandan army is “better equipped than that of any of the other affected countries”, although Kony is no longer active in Uganda andhasn’t been since 2006 by their own admission. Thesebooks each refer to the rape and sexual assault that are perennial issues with the UPDF, the military group Invisible Children is defending.

Writing in depth on his always worthwhile blog, My Heart’s in Accra, Global Voices co-founder Ethan Zuckerman, director of the MIT Center for Civic Media, takes issue with the simplicity of Kony 2012.

The campaign Invisible Children is running is so compelling because it offers an extremely simple narrative: Kony is a uniquely bad actor, a horrific human being, whose capture will end suffering for the people of Northern Uganda. If each of us does our part, influences powerful people, the world’s most powerful military force will take action and Kony will be captured.

Russell implicitly acknowledges the simplicity of the narrative with his filmmaking. Much of his short film features him explaining to his young son that Kony is a bad guy, and that dad’s job is capturing the bad guy. We are asked to join the campaign against Kony literally by being spoken to as a five year old. It’s not surprising that a five year old vision of a problem – a single bad guy, a single threat to eliminate – leads to an unworkable solution. Nor is it a surprise that this extremely simple narrative is compelling and easily disseminated.

He also noted that one of the main goals of Kony 2012 - persuading the Obama Administration to take action – was accomplished when the President committed 100 U.S. military advisers to help the Ugandan military in 2010. Then there’s the criticism of the Kony video for what some see as its inherent western lens and tone of condescension. Author Teju Cole, a native of Nigeria who just won a Hemingway Foundation/PEN Award for his first novel Open City, took to Twitter to criticize Kony 2012 in “Seven thoughts on the banality of sentimentality.” They included:

1- From Sachs to Kristof to Invisible Children to TED, the fastest growth industry in the US is the White Savior Industrial Complex.

Having worked with organizations and activists in international development, I understand this sentiment. There is a strong movement to shift the old model of outside aid and assistance to one of cooperation and collaboration on more even terms. The Kony 2012 video does come across as both sentimental and paternalistic. And yet…

When was the last time that a vast consumer society in the United States and across the developed world actually paid attention (at least for a minute or two) on a massive scale to the serious and endemic problems of sub-Saharan eastern Africa? In short, my views are mixed here and I’m left wondering about the big question Ethan Zuckerman asks on his blog: “Can we advocate without oversimplifying?”

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Clarity, conciseness & precision of arguments is important to help create a “wake-up call” to the reality of our world. Then debate can filter up to elected officials, movers & shakers…can be put on agendas with action behind them.

This is social science in action. It is wonderfully unpredictable. Social movements and community organising on a global scale for the purposes of serving humanity can not and should not be refuted. Complementary approaches and debate will always be instigated by such efforts. Overall, engaging the masses is a positive step forward in shifting power dynamics in favour of oppressed groups.

You should read into some of the theory of community organizing: suggest Marshall Ganz. http://isites.harvard.edu/icb/icb.do?keyword=k2139 KONY 2012 captures all the essential elements of a designed social movement: ought to always emphasise personal narrative. This is not self-absorption: it’s an effective premise for change!

The truth is that no matter the method the you do not want to hear about the bad things, you do not want to see people die. There are situations the world over that need to be heard and who are you to diminish someone’s passion because that person is “privileged”. You have got to be completely insane. If people stop doing what they can (even if it’s a damn bracelet) because if it has anything to do with money than it’s just the “white savior” appeasing their conscience then there will be no support for those who are building schools etc. If one person is saved, if one school is built, if one KONY is held to account for his crimes than it is worth it. We know that it is more complex than a poster on a wall, but we have a caught sight of a better world, we felt the pain of another human being and are striving to do something anything we can. You are trying to stop that only God knows why.